Ian DonaldBorn 27 Dec 1910; died 19 Jun 1987 at age 76. English physician who first successfully applied ultrasound reflection imaging for medical diagnosis. He had become familiar with sonar during service in WW II, and first tested the idea of probing organs with ultrasound on 21 Jul 1955, when he investigated specimens of tumours from human organs with an industrial ultrasonic metal flaw detector. After a period of development, he later he used ultrasound in a life-saving diagnosis of a huge, easily removable, ovarian cyst in a woman who had been diagnosed by others as having inoperable stomach cancer. He published the Investigation of Abdominal Masses by Pulsed Ultrasound in The Lancet (7 Jun 1958). The next year, he extended its use to investigate fetal growth during pregnancy.«* |
